I've been searching for the name of an 80s martial arts computer game for the last couple of days, so in reading a lot of game summaries I found this interesting character creation process from a game called Chambers of Shaolin:

Quote:

Oh, just another beat�em up game? Not exactly. In this game you have to create your character/fighter first in several arcade sequences!

This is what makes this game unique. There are six different sequences you have to play in order to create a new character, they are called "the chambers of shaolin" (historically there were 35 and you had to master each of them in order to get the highest grade in shaolin kung fu). These sequences vary greatly in what you have to do, for example there is the classic smashing of bricks where you have to maul your poor joystick like you did in the era of Decathlon and ...-Games. But there are also very unique ones like the chamber in the mill. You have to kick a sandbag hanging very high. When it starts swinging you try to hit two bulkheads with it, and you better hurry cause water is pouring in! You can even be knocked over by the sandbag and lose time if you miss it!

After you passed all chambers, a character will be generated with stats matching your results. For example, if you managed to smash many bricks you will have great strength. These stats do determine how much damage your character does, how long his healthbar will be, how fast his health regenerates, how fast he will move and even which moves he will be able to use!

I thought this could be an interesting way to handle things in a player-skill focused PD mud (i.e. one with less use for XP and levels). Experienced players would naturally create better characters, so PD wouldn't be as much of a blow to the time you've invested in the game.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure whether I like it. From a competitive perspective it's like inversed handicapping - the more skillful the player, the stronger their character. As the more skillful player should be able to win anyway (all other things being equal), this is really just widening the gap between skill levels.

You could also run into problems with skilled players creating and selling characters. I could also see people designing bots with the express purpose of producing maxed-out characters.

From a competitive perspective it's like inversed handicapping - the more skillful the player, the stronger their character.

To cancel the inversed handicap: this character creation system can be used for choosing other aspects of the characters which are "balanced", e.g. classes. In this example, a character who performs well in a "strength" test but poorly in an "intelligence" test will be offered to be a warrior.

KaVir wrote:

You could also run into problems with skilled players creating and selling characters.

To make the sale of characters or bots pointless:

1) The creation shouldn't be too hard to "master" so that anyone can learn how to create the character which they want in a short amount of time. The interest is then that this creation system is more used as a guidance for new or undecided players.

or

2) Another alternative which I find interesting is that a player who doesn't play as well as his character is will lose the bonuses that he got at character creation over time, i.e. if someone skilled create your character and you are not so skilled, your character will be less skilled over time. It requires a bigger design change than simple character creation though.